IsraPundit

October 12, 2002

Help save Palestinian children

PALESTINIAN CHILDREN ON THE FRONT LINES

Justus Weiner has authored a comprehensive issue brief entailed, "The Recruitment of Children in Current Palestinian Strategy." Weiner is scholar in residence at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (http://www.jcpa.org), headed by Dore Gold and Lenny Ben-David. (To subscribe to the Jerusalem Issue Brief, please send a blank email message to:
brief4-subscribe@jcpa.org)

Weiner cites recent examples of how Palestinian children and teenagers have assumed an integral role in the murder of Israeli civilians:

- February 2002 - Nora Shalhoob, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl, was killed while charging a group of Israeli soldiers at a military checkpoint with a knife in her hand.

- March 2002 - A 16-year-old Palestinian girl named Ayat Akhras walked into a Jerusalem supermarket and detonated a bomb concealed under her clothing, killing two Israelis and wounding 22 others.

- April 2002 - 17-year-old Andaleeb Taqataqah was recruited by a terror squad and sent to her death in a suicide attack on a crowded Jerusalem market.

- April 2002 - Three teenagers - Anwar Hamduna, Yusef Zakut, and Abu Nada - from Gaza, attempted to crawl under the perimeter fence and attack the residents of the Jewish community of Netzarim, only to be shot dead by guards.

- May 2002 - For over a month, Palestinian children as young as 10 barricaded themselves in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, alongside Palestinian gunmen.

May 2002 - A 16-year-old Palestinian boy was arrested in a taxi near Jenin with a suicide bomb on his body.

- June 2002 - A 15-year-old Palestinian girl, arrested for throwing a firebomb at IDF soldiers, admitted during interrogation that she had previously been recruited as a suicide terrorist.

- July 2002 - Israeli security forces arrested another 15-year-old Palestinian girl who admitted to having agreed to carry out a suicide attack in Israel.

Early in the current intifada, Weiner notes, children acted as decoys, burning tires and shooting slingshots to attract TV cameras while making it harder for the world to identify the gunmen lying in ambush. Knowing that Israeli soldiers are ordered not to shoot live ammunition at children, Palestinian snipers hide among groups of youngsters, on rooftops or in alleys, often using kids as shields when aiming at exposed IDF soldiers. On some occasions, these gunmen apparently have inadvertently shot Palestinian children from behind.

"With your help, we can bring down the Zionist country and thereby rid the world of another racist country," the e-mails state. "Jews in Palestine have systematically destroyed the lives of the indigenous Palestinians who had lived there for hundreds of years. It is time for us to speak out and be heard, and you can be part of this revolution!"

Two e-mails containing these anti-Israel, antisemitic sentiments, along with encouragement to challenge "Israeli Apartheid," were sent to more than 1,000 University of Michigan (U of M) faculty, staff members and student leaders on Sept. 25. The e-mails invite faculty and students to "speak out against Israel" at the Second National Student Conference on the Palestine Solidarity Movement scheduled for Oct. 12-14 at the university - www.divestmentconference.com

As tensions grow and debate heats up concerning divestment of campus-held stock in companies doing business in Israel, reports of the controversial U of M e-mails thrust their upcoming conference into the national spotlight. Sponsored by a U of M student group, Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), the conference plans to encourage divestment and discourage U.S. aid to Israel.

Mideast war rages on U.S. campuses
Websites add to arsenal of students fighting anti-Israel bias

WorldNetDaily.com

A Mideast war rages on the campuses of universities across the U.S. as pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel student groups, professors and activists clash in a microcosmic intifada.

Battle lines have already been drawn at the University of Michigan as that school prepares to host a national student conference on the "Palestine Solidarity Movement" this weekend. Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, or SAFE, is the registered student sponsor of the conference. According to its website, SAFE is a "diverse group of students, activists, and community members organized to promote justice, human rights, liberation and self-determination for the Palestinian people."

The group "condemns the racism and discrimination inherent in Zionism" and outlines its mission statement for the conference as promoting "divestment from Israel, ending U.S. aid to Israel and right of return." The website expresses tacit support for terrorism by stating, "As a solidarity movement, it is not our place to dictate the strategies or tactics adopted by the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation." It further lists suggested "tactics" for conference attendees that include "education, public demonstrations and rallies" and "civil disobedience or direct action."

Among the panelists scheduled to speak at the conference is Sami Al-Arian, a tenured professor recently suspended by the University of South Florida amid a federal investigation into his suspected association with terrorist organizations. USF is suing for the right to terminate Al-Arian, claiming it can prove that he has maintained ties to terrorists for 14 years that have seriously damaged USF.

BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon appears to be compromising in its simmering water dispute with Israel, which bluntly threatened to invade its northern neighbour over its tapping of a key border spring.

Beirut is now reportedly prepared to restrict the amount of water it taps from the southern Wazzani spring, which was visited Saturday by a key US State Department water official.

The country may now only pump drinking water from the controversial spring, and not use it for large-scale irrigation projects in nearby villages, as had originally been planned, the An-Nahar daily said Saturday.

"Lebanon will make do with pumping drinking water from the Wazzani river, from Wednesday, and will put off indefinitely irrigation projects following American 'comments,'" the newspaper quoted informed sources as saying.

Specifically, An-Nahar attributed the decision to limit the drawdown to "American comments contained in a report prepared by an American expert."

The newspaper did not say to which report it was referring, but US State Department water expert Charles Lawson has been working to defuse the crisis.

On Saturday morning, he toured the Wazzani spring site, protected by 50 elite army commandos and some 20 bodyguards from the US embassy.

He spent about 20 minutes inspecting the pipes installed at the source of the spring and one of the pumping stations about a kilometre (half a mile) away in the area close to the Lebanese-Israeli border.

Israeli soldiers watched closely through binoculars from a few hundred metres (yards) away.

But fighters from the Shiite militia Hezbollah, which effectively controls parts of the south, were deployed in force in the area during the visit, but remained out of sight during Lawson's tour.

Lawson also took a look at the Hasbani riverbed, to the north, which is dry at this time of year.

He first visited Lebanon and Israel last month. He returned to Lebanon on Tuesday, and met the next day with Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.

On Friday, Lebanon also delivered a report to the UN Security Council and the European Union on its exploitation of the Wazzani.

The report said two pumps could exploit a total of 10 million cubic meters (325 million cubic feet) a year, much less than the 35 million cubic meters (1.235 billion cubic feet) granted to Lebanon under an unratified 1955 agreement.

Israel's hardline Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has threatened war over Lebanon's plan to tap the Wazzani.

The river is the main source of Lebanon's Hasbani river. That flows into the River Jordan, which, in turn, feeds the Sea of Galilee, Israel's main fresh water source.

On Thursday, Sharon said the "Americans are trying to find a solution, and the case is the subject of contacts between the parties."

Lebanon plans to provide drinking water initially to 20 villages in the border area, which was under Israeli occupation for 22 years until the May 2000 troop withdrawal.

Christian Coalition leaders fired up the faithful Friday with a pro-Israel rally and a pitch to renew the group's power by rousting out the vote in November for conservative candidates.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., exhorted the crowd at the Washington Convention Center to vote liberals out of office.

``If you don't do it, it ain't gonna be done,'' he said. ``You will be doing the Lord's work, and he will richly bless you for it.''

``Faith with Action'' was the public theme of the coalition's Road to Victory conference, which opened Friday. The underlying purpose of the three-day event was to raise the Christian Coalition's profile after a string of setbacks and to turn its claimed 2 million supporters into voters on Nov. 5.

The conservative activist group and its new president, Roberta Combs, are battling a widespread perception that the coalition is far less a political force than it was in the mid-1990s.

Combs, a longtime coalition organizer from Hanahan, S.C., took over the group in December after founder Pat Robertson said he wanted to spend more time on his ministry.

``I think that as long as we're here, we'll also have influence,'' Combs said this week in an interview, after months of avoiding media contact. ``We're still here; we're still involved.''

Some people assumed the coalition was disappearing as a political force. Director Ralph Reed left in 1997 to become a Republican activist in Georgia and became chairman of the state party last year. In 1999, the Internal Revenue Service ruled against the coalition's tax-exempt status, which forced it to reorganize. Robertson's departure last December was a blow.

Reed's party chairmanship became a symbol of what has happened to the Christian conservative movement.

Part of the reason for the Christian Coalition's lower profile, however, is its success. Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, after 40 years of Democratic majorities. Seventy million voter guides and 1 million get-out-the-vote calls helped elect George W. Bush president in 2000.

Bush sent the convention a videotaped message Friday, greeting the Christian conservatives and promising an administration that would advocate the group's key agenda items: anti-abortion activism, low taxes, limited government and judges who don't legislate.

The demonstration of solidarity with Israel is consistent with a long-standing alliance with that country, which Christians consider a part of the biblical Holy Land.

Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert saluted ``the great believers and lovers of Zion'' gathered in the convention hall. He said their support helps Israelis endure Palestinian bombings.

``It is hard to live with the sights, to go to sleep with them, to wake up in the morning, to know what you have seen,'' Olmert told coalition members. ``But don't get it wrong. This is pain and tears but not weakness.''

He received several standing ovations from coalition members waving Israeli flags.

``This rally is to say there are people, there are millions of us,'' said Coalition founder Robertson. ``We will stand with Israel.''

So with an ally in the White House and ``the largest and best-equipped lobbying team in coalition history,'' the group opened its annual meeting with messages designed to motivate.

The notion of separating church and state with such policies as disallowing prayer in public schools ``is a deception from Satan,'' said Joyce Meyer, a convention sponsor.

``If God is in fact separated from the government, then we can never possibly have a godly government,'' Meyer said to a standing ovation. ``There's no way for America to be good if she's not godly.''

Meyer, head of Joyce Meyer Ministries of Fenton, Mo., said activists probably will find more spiritual awareness in the aftermath of the ``wake-up call'' of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. God did not cause the attacks, she said, but they should teach the country a lesson.

``If we don't obey God, God's protection is lifted,'' Meyer said.

The convention hall, set up to accommodate 6,500 seats, was less than half full but a larger crowd was expected for events over the weekend

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's foreign minister has acknowledged that the PLO National Covenant, with its many clauses calling for violence and the destruction of Israel, has never been changed, reports Dubai newspaper Al Bayan.

The paper quoted Foreign Minister Farouk Kaddoumi in an article earlier this week.

The 1993 Oslo accords required Arafat to remove those clauses from the National Covenant.

The European Union is slowly moving closer to the American view of the Palestinian Authority and its chairman, Yasser Arafat, according to reports that have reached Jerusalem in advance of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's planned trip to Washington next week.

Four days ago, Arafat hosted the EU's foreign policy coordinator, Javier Solana, at his office in Ramallah. Solana reportedly used the meeting to deliver a stern warning and urge Arafat to transfer the reins of power to someone else. Moreover, senior EU and United Nations officials have recently been saying in private conversations that Arafat is an obstacle to reforming the PA and must be replaced.

Solana's visit to Arafat initially elicited strong criticism from both Jerusalem and Washington. Sharon and Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer told Solana that his visit had hindered efforts to reform the PA. But once the contents of the conversation became known, the American administration changed its tune and praised the visit.

State Department officials are now working on a "road map" for calming the Israeli-Palestinian violence and restarting negotiations. They have been exchanging drafts of a detailed three-stage plan with European colleagues based on an outline released last month by the Quartet (the U.S., EU, UN and Russia). The plan calls for a cooling-off period, followed by establishment of a Palestinian state with temporary borders, and finally a permanent-status agreement. According to the Quartet's outline, the process will be completed in 2005.

Data reaching Israel indicate that the U.S. draft makes tough demands on both sides. During the first stage, Israel will be required to withdraw to the positions it held before the intifada broke out two years ago and to freeze settlement construction. The Palestinians will have to rebuild their security services under a unified command and implement comprehensive financial and administrative reforms.

The plan also calls for the temporary Palestinian state to be established on more than 50 percent of the West Bank. This means an additional Israeli withdrawal would be necessary, as well as the likely evacuation of some isolated settlements. However, this is still only a draft, and it is not clear the White House will approve it as is. The administration has already promised Israel that it will not take a stance on the final borders, leaving this to direct negotiations between the two parties.

For Sharon, the most problematic part of the plan is the strict timetable. Sharon opposes all timetables, arguing that they merely serve to increase pressure on Israel and absolve the Palestinians of responsibility. Instead, he would like every new stage of the process to be contingent on each side meeting specified benchmarks.

Assistant Secretary of State William Burns will visit the region in the next two weeks with the twofold task of obtaining Arab support for an American attack on Iraq and discussing the "road map" with Israel and the Palestinians so that it can be implemented once the Iraqi issue is settled.

During his meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush next week, Sharon will be devoting considerable attention to "the day after Iraq" in an effort to obtain a pledge that the U.S. will not force an agreement with the Palestinians on Israel. He will also try to determine how much freedom of action the Americans are willing to give him with regard to military operations against the Palestinians, both in the period leading up to an American war on Iraq and during such a war.

Government sources in Jerusalem believe that in the long run, Sharon has no reason to worry, since Bush is not interested in getting deeply involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the near term, however, the White House is demanding quiet on the Israeli-Palestinian front, and some of Sharon's advisers have consequently recommended that he demonstrate flexibility next week, for instance, by a partial withdrawal of the IDF in Gaza or by a meeting with a senior Palestinian official.

"The security guard at the entrance to the cafe searched him and when he found the explosive vest, the man ran away and the guard chased him while calling for help from security personnel of the American Embassy," said Shlomit Herzberg, chief spokeswoman for police in Tel Aviv.

The embassy security guards overpowered the man and called police. She said a bomb squad removed the man's explosive vest and it was being neutralized.

There were no immediate reports of injury and police said they did not know of any other people involved in the attack.

The suspect, whose identity was not immediately available, was detained and taken to a police station for questioning.

The embassy is a prominent three-story brick building on a beachfront promenade lined with bars, restaurants and high-rise hotels. Security guards there include both Israelis and Americans.

The incident occurred a day after a suicide bomber killed a 71-year-old woman and injured four other people near Tel Aviv.

An Israeli bus driver closed the door before the 30-year-old Palestinian could board his crowded bus, then joined with a doctor in pinning the man to the ground while most of those nearby fled.

Also on Friday, more than 10,000 supporters of Arafat's Fatah movement rallied in the heart of Gaza City, many firing automatic weapons into the air.

It was a show of strength directed at a rival group, the militant Islamic organization Hamas. Demonstrators insisted on the surrender of men who killed the head of Palestinian riot police on Monday.

An even larger crowd of police officers and militiamen marched Thursday in the funeral procession for Col. Rajah Abu Lehiya, who was killed by a militiaman from the Islamic militant group Hamas.

The policeman's killing set off skirmishes in which six other people have died - the latest a 17-year-old youth who died Friday of injuries sustained earlier in the week.

The articles I posted on October 10 and 11, entitled, “Don’t go wobbly, Israel”, expressed my concern about attempts to appease terrorists and their supporters by making concessions to them. It may be useful to put these concerns in a broader context.

The “mother of all appeasements” was, of course, Munich, September, 1938. All democracies paid a horrible price for this attempted appeasement, with Canada alone losing 40,000 lives out of an army of 1.2 million. Even this toll dwarfs in relation to the losses suffered by the Jewish people and the people of the former USSR.

But in relation to Israel, it is instructive to note the history of British attempts to appease the Arabs in the region, and the Palestinian Arabs in particular. In her monumental opus, From Time Immemorial, Joan Peters documented the British vain attempts to appease the Palestinian Arab population at the Zionists’ expense, between 1920 and 1940 (see complete reference at article’s end). The list includes:

1920 - Arabs engage in Anti-Jewish “Easter riots” - British set immigration quotas on Jews to appease Arabs.
1921 - May riots by Arabs against Jews - British suspend Jewish immigration temporarily, then (1922) lop off “Trans-Jordania” from Jewish National Home.
1929 - Arab riots against Jews, Hebron massacre - British attempt to appease Arabs with the Passfield White Paper (1930), restricting Jewish immigration AND Jewish land purchases.
1936-1939 - Large scale riots by Arabs against Jews AND British, including the assassination of a British District Commissioner, Lewis Andrews. Further British attempt to appease Arabs by the Peel partition plan, giving most of Palestine’s territory to Arabs, and reducing the Jewish National Home to a tiny sliver. Arabs reject, will not be appeased. New British White Paper (1939) cuts Jewish immigration to virtually zero, at a time when Jews must flee Nazi occupations. Land purchases by Jews further restricted (1940).

Clearly, these and all subsequent British attempts to appease the Arabs were equally unsuccessful. For example, during WW II, Britain had to use brute force to squash pro-Nazi governments in both Iraq (April, 1941) and Egypt (February, 1942). During Israel’s War of Independence, Britain intervened on the Arab side numerous times, including an ultimatum on December 30, 1948, that eventually forced Israel to relinquish the Gaza strip into Egyptian hands. This attempt to appease Egypt (then under British influence) was so “successful”, that within a few years Britain was ejected from her Suez Canal bases by her very own Egyptian proteges.

Britain met the same fate in Transjordan, the very state Britain created at the expense of the Jewish National Home. Britain may have created the Transjordanian army and provided it with funding, hardware and commanding officers (notably, John Glubb “Pasha”), but this did not stop King Hussein from expelling the British officers, including John Glubb (March, 1956).

The attempts of the US to curry favour with the Arabs were just as “successful” and honourable (or, in this case, should I say ‘honorable’?). In 1956/57, Eisenhower’s brutal pressure forced Israel to withdraw unconditionally from the Sinai, sowing the seeds of the 1967 War. But Egypt (and Syria) still fell into the Soviet orbit: the West gained nothing from bullying our sister-republic and appeasing the Arab world.

And then there is the book of Western appeasement by non-action. For the three decades prior to 9-11 (2001), the West was subject to a long list of terrorist attacks by Islamists against Western (non-Israeli) targets, none of which met with an appropriate response on the part of the Western democracies (terrorism against Israeli targets since 1948 warrants a separate chapter). In an article posted on Dawson Speaks on August 16, 2002, I listed 30 major attacks that occurred in the period 1973-2001, including the murder of the US ambassador to Khartoum, Cleo Noel (1973), the hijacking of an Air France plane to Entebbe (1976), the attacks in Lebanon against the US embassy and the US Marines (1983), the Lockerbie airborne bombing (1988), the (first) bomb at the World Trade Centre (1993), the Khobar Towers bomb (1996), and the bombing of two US embassies in Africa (1998). In the face of Western inaction-for-appeasement, 9-11 was inevitable.

Will we ever, ever learn?

Reference:

Peters, Joan. From Time Immemorial - The origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine . New York: Harper and Row, 1984. The incidents cited in this article are listed in pp. 318-320.

October 11, 2002

- Frenchman Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, who won the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics with two American researchers, is delighted with the honor, but embarrassed by the bombardment of calls from the media and well-wishers.

Cohen-Tannoudji is a professor at the prestigious College de France and a member of France's Academy of Sciences.

He is the third Jew to receive a 1997 Nobel Prize. Stanford University Professor Myron Scholes was named a co-recipient of the the Nobel Prize for economics, and Stanley Prusiner, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco, received the Nobel Prize in medicine.

Cohen-Tannoudji shared the award with Steven Chu of Stanford University and William Phillips of Maryland's National Institute of Standards and Technology for developing methods to cool and trap atoms with lasers -- work that in the future may be applied to medicine and space-related industries.

``Of course I'm immensely happy, but I haven't had a minute to myself. After all, what I love to do is research and teach,'' Cohen- Tannoudji, 61, said.

``In the United States, where there are many Nobel laureates, they are celebrated, but then very quickly they return to being physicists, chemists and biologists, like everyone else.

``Here, I wish there wasn't this sudden focus on me,'' he added.

Cohen-Tannoudji was born in 1933 in Algeria, then a French colonial possession.

An Auschwitz survivor who recently was criticized for defending Israel became the first Hungarian to win the Nobel prize for literature.
The award to Imre Kertesz, 72, was announced Thursday. Hungarian Jews said the prize was gratifying to the entire community, while Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy told Kertesz that because of him, “the citizens of Hungary can be proud to be Hungarians.”

Kertesz was deported from Budapest to Auschwitz and from there to Buchenwald, where he was liberated in 1945. His books, all of which deal with the Holocaust, have been especially popular in Germany.

Among his most popular books are “Without Fate,” an autobiographical account of his experiences in the Holocaust, and “Kaddish for a Child Not Born,” in which he condemned a world that permitted the Holocaust.

Kertesz has been a frequent target of the Hungarian far-right. Far-right writer Istvan Csurka condemned Kertesz for saying that “my luggage is never unpacked, waiting in my house to leave Hungary.”

Kertesz has been an outspoken critic of the far-right, often writing in Hungarian newspapers to condemn the anti-Semitism espoused by the nation’s extremists.

This spring, after Kertesz visited Jerusalem for a conference of Holocaust survivors sponsored by Yad Vashem, he was criticized in a Hungarian literary journal for writing a pro-Israel article.

That criticism came from left-wing intellectual Istvan Eorsi, another Hungarian Jewish writer.

Kertesz on Thursday told Hungarian radio that his life will not change because of the Nobel. He currently is on a one-year scholarship in Berlin, where he is working on a new novel.

LONDON Baroness Susan Greenfield, a renowned neuroscientist and the director of the Royal Institution, has condemned a proposal to impose an academic boycott on Israel. The proposal was made by academics from Britain and Europe who were joined by some of their colleagues from Israel.

Speaking at an event organized by the British-Israel Chambers of Commerce, Greenfield said that "the idea of an academic boycott on Israel is deplorable and reflects British academia in a very bad light because the reasons for it are wrong and groundless."

She said that a British scientific team was planning to visit Israel shortly and that she is personally working with a firm that is cooperating with an Israeli company in developing medical software.

Greenfield, a professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, is the first woman to head the Royal Institution, one of the most prestigious in Britain.

The volume of trade between the two countries stood last year at 2.6 billion pounds sterling, making Israel Britain's largest client in the Middle East.

A delegation of senior representatives from the Hezbollah organization visited Tehran recently to discuss the continued support of the group with senior Iranian government officials, the international Arabic newspaper Al Sharq Al Awsat quoted Iranian sources as saying on Saturday.

The newspaper's Iranian affairs correspondent reported that fears were raised among Hezbollah leaders that Tehran's support for the organization might weaken as a result of growing American pressure on Iran. It was noted that the fact that Hezbollah leaders received differing reports regarding continued support of the organization during recent meetings between senior group leaders and Iranian officials.

Last month the brother of Iranian President Mohammed Khatami visited Lebanon, while, according to various reports, the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Yahya Rahim Safavi, also visited Lebanon.

The report noted that Hezbollah's fears stemmed from the fact that a news site representing Iran's reformist camp quoted a senior Iranian official as saying that if Khatami and his associates resign from the government, Iran would have to cease its support of the Hezbollah. The report also stated that Iran recently decided to increase its "humanitarian" support for Hezbollah and increase its support for southern Lebanon.

Leaders from Hezbollah and the Lebanese Shi'ite Amal movement met on Friday, after armed activists from each group battled in southern Lebanon, fired on each other, and hurled hand grenades. The fight between the two groups broke out on Thursday when Amal supporters reached one of the villages in the western section of southern Lebanon. This was another battle in a series of conflicts between the two groups in recent weeks, amid a growing struggle for areas of influence in southern Lebanon. Group leaders released a statement in which they announced the need to maintain stability in southern Lebanon.

Activists gear up for showdown at Michigan divestment meeting, which has a photo from the Concordia U. riot I haven't seen before. It shows a Palestinian rioter waving a Che Guevara flag, which pretty much sums up the nature of the anti-Israel forces--anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-capitalist, self-styled '60s revolutionaries.

I never thought I'd see this, but this article in the Economist lays out a pretty fair explanation of why Israel's refusal to follow UN demands isn't similar to Iraq's, contary to the beliefs of the anti-war, anti-American, anti-Israel left.

The UN distinguishes between two sorts of Security Council resolution. Those passed under Chapter Six deal with the peaceful resolution of disputes and entitle the council to make non-binding recommendations. Those under Chapter Seven give the council broad powers to take action, including warlike action, to deal with “threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, or acts of aggression”. Such resolutions, binding on all UN members, were rare during the cold war. But they were used against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait. None of the resolutions relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict comes under Chapter Seven. By imposing sanctions—including military ones—against Iraq but not against Israel, the UN is merely acting in accordance with its own rules.
...
Resolution 242 of 1967, passed after the six-day war and frequently cited in the double-standards argument, does not say what a lot of the people who quote it think it says (see article). It does not instruct Israel to withdraw unilaterally from the territories occupied in 1967. It does not condemn Israel's conquest, for the good reason that most western powers at that time thought it the result of a justifiable pre-emptive war. It calls for a negotiated settlement, based on the principle of exchanging land for peace. This is a very different matter. In the case of Iraq, the Security Council has instructed Mr Hussein to take various unilateral actions that he is perfectly capable of taking. Resolution 242 cannot be implemented unilaterally, even if Israel wanted to do so.
...
Over the past two years, the intifada has given rise to a new batch of resolutions. Some rebuke the Israelis for using “excessive” force, others make specific demands. Resolution 1435, for example, calls on Israel to pull out of the Palestinian cities it has recently reoccupied and back to the positions it held before the violence started in September 2000. It has been ignored. But like most recent resolutions, this one cuts both ways. It makes demands of the Palestinians, too, which have also been ignored. In this case, the Palestinian Authority is instructed to cease all violence and incitement, and to bring “those responsible for terrorist acts” to justice.
...
What, though, about Israel's nukes? Does its status as an undeclared nuclear power put it on a par with Iraq, which has tried to become one? No. In 1981, Resolution 487 scolded Israel for sending its aircraft to destroy Iraq's Osiraq reactor, which Israel said was being used to manufacture a nuclear weapon, despite having been given a clean bill of health by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Noting that Israel had not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), as Iraq had, the UN called on Israel to put its own nuclear facilities under the IAEA safeguards, as the NPT requires.

Two decades on, Israel has still not signed the NPT. This infuriates the treaty's supporters, who have been striving to make it “universal”. But, as with any other treaty, governments are free not to sign. What they are not free to do is sign, receive the foreign (civilian) nuclear help to which signing entitles them, and then try to build a bomb secretly. This, it is now ruefully accepted, is what Iraq tried to do, and may still be trying to do. Israel is thought to possess a large nuclear arsenal, about which it is not being open and honest, and this is provoking to its neighbours. But it is not evidence of “double standards”. Being a nuclear-armed power is not, by itself, a breach of international law. The article does make a few comments about Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria that are wrong, but at least the Economist seems to be trying to do a better job than it has in the past, as explained here by Bret Stephens. There was a response by the editor of the Economist, and a rebuttal to the response by Stephens, but I can't locate them.

Israel Should Give Financial Support to Basque Terrorists, the Real IRA and the Italian Red Army

Two posts below is an article concerning Europe's willingness, once again, to murder of Jews, by providing gun money to Hamas.

To be frank, I do not believe that arguing with Europe will be successful. I generally support the practice of fighting fire with firing.

Israel should dollar for dollar match the European funding of Hamas and other Jew murdering outfits by providing donations to European militants like the Basque separatists, the Italian Red Army, the Real IRA, etc. For Israel's dollars to work the most efficiently, instead of providing hard cash, Israel should use the earmarked money to purchase locally manufactured guns, ammunition, explosives, and other necessary equipment and deliver it to these activist groups.

Perhaps Europe will turn from its Jew murdering ways for the sake of its own self interest.

PS - IN a NYT article today it mentions that the Israelis killed two "youths" - one youth was 18. Not much of a youth in the West and certainly not in the Medieval Middle East. That is why the NYT SUCKS.

Anti-Israelism and anti-Americanism travel together. In the Arab Middle East, the link is standard fare, but a more interesting case in point is Europe. Take José Bové, who first gained notoriety around the world in 1999 by leading the charge of a "deconstructivist" mob against a McDonald's restaurant in France. In March 2002, he showed up in Ramallah, denouncing Israel and pledging enthusiastic support to Yasir Arafat while the latter's headquarters was being surrounded by Israeli tanks. Arafat's cause was Bové's cause, this mise-en-scène suggested-never mind that the Israeli army had not simply dropped in for a little oppression but in defense against mounting terrorist attacks.

Pick a peace-minded demonstration in Europe these days or a publication of the extreme left or right, and you'll find anti-Israeli and anti-American resentments side by side-in the tradition first invented by the Khomeinists of Iran, whose demonology abounds with references to the "small" and "great Satan."

What explains this linkage? First, Israel and the United States are the most successful states in their respective neighborhoods: Israel in the regional arena, the United States on the global beat. They boast the most fearsome armies, they command impressive technological infrastructures, and the Israeli economy vastly outperforms those of each of its neighbors while the United States has the world's number one economy. Moreover, both are stable, vibrant democracies. One need not invoke Dr. Sigmund Freud to infer that success breeds envy and resentment. The resentment is compounded by the rampant modernity both countries epitomize. Relentless change, as inflicted from outside, does not sit well with European societies, which obey a very different social contract-one that favors social and economic protection against the effects of the market and rapid technological transformation. The unconscious syllogism goes like this: Globalization is Americanization, and both have found their most faithful disciple in Israel.

The Bush administration has acknowledged failure in winning full cooperation from the European Union in halting financing to Hamas and other Middle East groups deemed as terrorists.

U.S. officials said the EU has placed Al Qaida and related groups on the European list of terrorist sponsors. But the EU has failed to act against insurgency groups linked to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Middle East Newsline reported.

The officials said the EU insists on distinguishing between the political and military activities of insurgency groups.

The result has been a slowdown in international efforts to halt financing to Al Qaida and its satellite organizations in the Middle East. A key dispute between the United States and the EU regards Hamas, officials said. They said the EU maintains a distinction between the military and political wings of the Palestinian group.

"There are some countries that make a distinction between the political wing of Hamas and the military wing of Hamas," Treasury Undersecretary Jimmy Gurule said. "Unless the U.S. government can provide information that traces money directly to the military wing that is supporting suicide bombings in the Middle East, there is some reluctance, or in some cases unwillingness, to go ahead and designate those individuals or entities. And it's a very difficult diplomatic and political problem with respect to those countries."

Gurule told the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday that he did not have a list of EU countries that have refused to cooperate with the United States. But other officials said France presents a key difficulty.

The result is that EU countries are refusing to freeze assets of those financing Hamas, officials said. The Islamic movement is said to obtain tens of millions of dollars a year from Iran and Saudi Arabia as well as individuals.

The EU has placed the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade on terrorist list. The Fatah-dominated umbrella group is said to be responsible for much of the insurgency attacks in the current war with Israel.

Officials said the United States and EU also differ on Iran. They said the EU has refused to halt investments in Iran, cited as a terrorist sponsor by the State Department. U.S. law prevents major investments in Iran's energy sector.

Undersecretary of State Alan Larson told the committee that the administration is pressing Gulf Cooperation Council states to draft and implement tough measures to halt the private financing of Islamic insurgency groups. He said Kuwait and Saudi Arabia "have indicated plans to take some serious action" to ensure that charities don't raise money for groups deemed as terrorists.

"I'm going to the Gulf shortly, and Dubai is one of the places I'm going to go. And one of the conversations we intend to have is, you know, what further steps can be taken to strengthen surveillance and oversight in the banking system about the money that moves in and out?"

With reference to my posting yesterday about Israel’s inaction concerning the Wazzani diversion, the inevitable has happened: the people behind the diversion, and Hizbollah in particular, have been embolden. The Jerusalem Post reports:

Lebanese technicians reportedly added a second pipe Thursday to the controversial Wazzani Springs pumping project, a day after testing the pumps despite warnings from Israel.

Israel Radio said the Lebanese have also begun paving an asphalt road from the pump to a nearby village in addition to other preparations for a planned October 16 dedication ceremony of the site to which thousands of guests have been invited.

I am not alone in being profoundly concerned about the far-reaching implications of Israeli inaction. The following citation from Arutz 7 is particularly instructive:

Military Option In Lebanon

If Israel continues to practice restraint in the face of the Lebanese water-pumping, this will deal yet another blow to Israel's deterrence ability." So warned top IDF leaders last night in a meeting with government leaders. They were referring to the new southern Lebanese water pumping station, which is scheduled to start regular operations next week. The new installation, only about a mile from the Israeli border, will draw water from the Wazani River, which pours into one of Israel's main water sources, the Hatzbani River. Prime Minister Sharon is said to agree with the military warning, yet feels that the American mediation efforts must be given another few days to succeed.

Talk about “deja vu all over again”! This “must be given another few days” is exactly what we heard on the eve of the Six Day War. Wake up, Israel!

The second part of my posting yesterday concerned the dismantling of outposts in Judea/Samaria. A reader commented that “the outposts were removed because they were illegal, i.e. were not approved by the government... Democracy cannot exist without the rule of law.” IMRA must have anticipated such a comment, for the site posted this ready-made response:

[T]he Palestinians have followed a consistent strategy of illegally erecting buildings on roads - including new bypass roads (infrastructure serving settlements) - that can be used as firing position from which to attack Israeli vehicles as they travel to and from settlements.
...
It is bad enough that the very same people who call out with great fervor for the demolition of every Jewish home in the West Bank that is missing even one of a myriad of approvals were silent about illegal Palestinian construction that may threaten Jewish lives. But some of the Israeli Left, who appear to put the value of an illegal Palestinian building over the value of Israeli lives, even go so far as to help rebuild them when they are demolished within the framework of the law.

Meantime, the demolition of Jewish settlements proceeds with zeal and alacrity. Ha’aretz reports:

Eight illegal settlement outposts were removed Thursday, bringing the total number of outposts dismantled this week to 12.

October 10, 2002

An article of Great Interest

The October 14&21 (double issue) of The New Yorker has an outstanding piece called In The Party of God, by Jeffrey Goldberg, which asks if the terrorists in Lebanon are preparing for a larger war. Mr. Goldberg interviews a number of Hezollah leaders, discusses the history of Hezbollah, its ability to court and win support among the Palestinians, and its ultimate aim. The piece concludes with an Israel perspective, noting, according to one general, that Israel will--perhaps after the American war against Saddam-- have to take on this major terror group once and for all.

This article, unfortunately, is not available on-line, and I do not have a scanner, so I can but point you to the article and hope that you read it.

Amish Tech says that it is really one dead and one ibn kelb piece of crap only dressed like a human being who made it into the title as a result of spintifada.

The examination of why they let the person go will be interesting. My understanding was that the dog was kicking his hind leg thighs up into the bomb and they were worried that the bomb was going to go off. After release the bomber ran towards a group of people who should have not been watching or should have been helping and killed and injured those people. Also, you would have thought that someone would have shot the dog. The two guys who caught the bomber are heroes.

The Israel Security Agency, working together with IDF forces, recently detained for questioning Rakahd Salim, the head of the Front for National Liberation in the West Bank, who was directly responsible for the transfer of Iraqi aid funds to the families of suicide bombers and Palestinian terrorists.

Rakahd Salim, the General Secretary of the Front for National Liberation in the West Bank, was arrested on October 2, 2002 after documents seized by the IDF during operation "Defensive Shield" indicated that he was responsible on behalf of Saddam Hussein for the distribution of money to the families of Palestinian terrorists and suicide bombers.

During the course of questioning by the Israel Security Agency, Rakahd Salim said that as head of his organization, he was in close contact with the Palestinian Ministry in Iraq as well as with the Iraqi Ba'ath party's United Pan-Arab Command. Salim last met Saddam Hussein in the year 2000, when he talked with him mainly about the situation of the Palestinian people.

In addition, Salim said that in the framework of his activities he distributed money to the families of Palestinians who were either killed or wounded. This money was received primarily from the Iraqi government and its leader, Saddam Hussein. When questioned, Salim said that so far he received and distributed approximately $15 Million of the Iraqi government's money.

How Salim Transferred the Money to the Palestinian Families:

The president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, was the one who decided that the money be given to families of the Palestinians who were either killed or wounded in the territories, and Saddam Hussein also determined the amount of money transferred to the bank. Initially, the money was transferred to the Iraqi "'Mashraf Al-Rapidin" bank in Amman, Jordan, and from there it was transferred to the Alastismar Bank in Jordan. The money was then further transferred to the account of the Palestinian Front for National Liberation in the Alastismar bank in Ramallah.

Salim said that resolutions of Iraqi Ba'ath party's United Pan-Arab Command provide for the family of a Palestinian who was killed to receive approximately $10,000. A seriously wounded Palestinian receives approximately $1,000 and a lightly wounded Palestinian receives $500.

Salim also said that as part of his job, he held regular weekly meetings with the heads of the Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front, in which he discussed with them terror attacks against Israel. He admitted that as senior member of the Palestinian Front for National Liberation he was aware of the activities and operations of his organization's military arm. This military arm carried out terrorist attacks in the 1970s in the Israeli communities of Kfar Giladi, Kfar Yuval and Misgav Am, among others.

Since 1997 Rakahd Salim has served as Arafat's advisor for international and political affairs. According to Salim, the Palestinian Authority is well aware of the Iraqi financial aid given to the families of the Palestinian suicide bombers.

The Jerusalem Post reports that another swell in the wall of the Temple Mount has appeared. Not defending the Temple Mount and allowing the Muslims complete control over it is seen as a sign of weakness by the Arabs. From the Arab point of view, isuch seeming indiference is the ultimate sign that the Jews lack a connection to the land and will eventually leave it.

The gap between the rich and relatively advanced State of Israel and the lagging Arab world has much increased (the Arab states are at the bottom of the United Nations' Human Development Index, behind South American, Caribbean, and Southeast Asian countries) and is liable to be another obstacle in the future of relationships between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. In Israel itself, however, despite the events of the last two years, equality between Jews and Muslims has grown in many aspects. Data from the health authorities, at least, attest to a better situation than in Western countries.

The data from the health authorities are most important because they measure not only the welfare of society but also its relations to the minorities living within it and because the right to health, which is one of the human rights, is actually the right to life and is of utmost importance. The UN, therefore, also views the data on infant mortality - perhaps the most important indicator for measuring public health - as the most important component of the Human Development Index. Infant mortality indexes are also considered the most reliable and can be compared internationally.

In Israel, there are gaps between the infant mortality rates among Jews and among Muslim Arabs. In 2001, the infant mortality rate among Arabs was 7.6 per thousand live births (Muslim Arabs, 8.2; Christian Arabs 2.6; Druze, 4.7), while among Jews it was 4.1. This is a substantial gap, which the Health Ministry explains is caused mainly by marriages between close relatives. It is worth noting, however, that the gaps in this area are shrinking at a truly impressive rate. During the years 1955-59, the infant mortality rate among Muslims was 60.6 per thousand - while among Jews it was 38.8 per thousand (take note, you who miss "the good old Israel"). The relationship between the two sets of figures may not have changed much, but the massive drop in infant mortality in the Muslim sector also brought this sector closer to Western rates.

An even more important fact is that the infant mortality gaps in Israel are lower than between Muslim minorities living in some Western countries and those of the local population. Researchers from the International Organization for Migration, based in Geneva, published data on these rates for the first time in 2000. In France, for example, the rate of stillbirths per thousand live births was 8 among the French and 13 among Arabs from North Africa. The mortality rates for babies up to one week old were 6 and 15 respectively. This means that the fetal and early infancy deaths among Arabs are more than twice that among the French majority.

In rich and developed France, the infant mortality rates among Arabs (most of whom speak the language of the country, and some of whom are already second, third and fourth generation natives of France) are not only much higher than in Israel - the gap between the minority and the majority there is considerably larger than in "racist Israel." These numbers speak for Israel more than dozens of anti-Semitic articles and anti-Israel resolutions.

In general the gaps in infant mortality rates between majorities and minorities - even when there is no national conflict between them - are higher even in the richest of countries. In Switzerland, the infant mortality rates per thousand for Swiss and Turks are 8.2 and 12.3, respectively. In Britain, 7.8 and 5.6 (English and Pakistanis). The situation is worst in the United States, where the rate for whites is 8.5 and for blacks, an astounding 21.3.

Against this background, it seems Israel's accomplishments are great, considering this is a country less wealthy than those mentioned above and one under conditions of severe national conflict between the majority and the minority. We must not suffice with this achievement. On the contrary, it proves that even under such conditions, Israel can reach full equality in every aspect of life between members of the Jewish majority and the national Arab minority.

Hadar Manor, 24, was not on campus when a bomb killed seven of her fellow Hebrew University students -- including five Americans -- in July, but recalling the memory of that day has been difficult.

While visiting college campuses, high schools, synagogues and other institutions as part of a program called Israel at Heart, Manor fields questions about returning to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to continue her studies.

. . . Manor traveled to New York with 47 other Israeli university students. Israel at Heart is a new initiative, sponsored by Joseph Low, a financier from Westchester, NY. Low is spending more than $100,000 to send Israeli students here, in the hopes of better informing locals about the situation in Israel.

Last week, Manor traveled to Florida with Shaun Sacks of Bar-Ilan University, and Yossi Cobe, who plans to attend Hebrew University next year.

Their mission is to educate American Jews and non-Jews about the situation in Israel, and to gain support. But Manor says it's not money that's needed, just informed support.

Ben-Eliezer, in his never ending attempt to win favor with the radical anti-Israel left, is once again threatening to destroy Jewish homes in Yesha. While Gush Shalom holds rallies for Barghouti, the loyal citizens of Yesha are sacrificed to the gods of appeasement and Ben-Eliezer’s re-election dreams. I wonder if the Likud and National camp voters who elected Sharon ever dreamed that decisions on Yesha would now be being made according to the bizarre whims of the deranged radical left. Meanwhile the terrorist murderers are being rewarded for their efficiency at murdering Jews. With Ben-Eliezer’s help they may yet attain their goal of a Judenfrei Middle-East. First Assaf, then Hebron, then Jerusalem and then Tel Aviv. We may yet live to see the day when, G-d forbid, Shimon Perez can realize his lifelong dream of personally surrendering Israel to Arafat and then throwing himself into the sea.

(Arutz Sheva) Popular opposition in Yesha (Judea, Samaria, and Gaza) to Defense Ministry plans to uproot Jewish residential outposts in Judea and Samaria is growing, as news of these intentions spreads. Following the dismantling of two unmanned outposts in the Shomron last night - one near Elkanah, and the other one near Kedumim - the Defense Ministry now plans to dismantle 24 more outposts, including at least three populated points: Assaf, at the turnoff leading to Beit El; Hilltop 762, near Maaleh Levonah; and Eshtamoa, near Hevron.

Yesha Council spokesmen say that dismantling the outposts rewards Arab terror, as many of the locations were established in response to murderous Palestinian terrorism acts. One of the two outposts dismantled last night, for instance, was named Gilad in memory of Shomron security officer Gilad Zar, and was situated very close to the site of his murder. In addition, the above-mentioned Assaf outpost, with six families, was established as a strategic outpost along the Jerusalem-Ofrah highway in memory of Assaf Hershkovitz, who was murdered nearby by Palestinian terrorists.

Pinchas Wallerstein, Binyamin Regional Council Chief and a long-time Yesha leader, accused Defense Minister Ben-Eliezer today of "blatant violation of the assurances he gave us." He said that Ben-Eliezer had promised not to evacuate certain places, to take action only via dialogue with the Yesha leaders, and not to '"reward the Palestinians" by evacuating only Jewish areas - "but now we see that he is doing exactly the opposite." Yesha Council sources say that it is clear that Ben-Eliezer is acting out of his own political considerations, and that his desire to win the Labor Party election for party leader next month is motivating his actions.

Arutz-7's Kobi Sela reports that contrary to the past, "when Defense Ministry threats to remove Yesha outposts would be followed by negotiations with the Yesha Council and then the riddance of a few empty caravans from some hilltops ... this time it looks much more serious." At an urgent midnight meeting last night with Central Command Chief Officer Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, the Yesha leaders learned that he had received strict orders to take down 24 more outposts within no more than a week. One consolation for the residents of the outposts, however, is that the Supreme Court recently ruled that populated outposts cannot be dismantled without prior warning, and that residents must be allowed a hearing before being evacuated.

Regarding the above-mentioned Assaf outpost, Wallerstein said,
"We paid in blood for this site, and this is the true Zionist response. We will continue to remain there, despite Ben-Eliezer's political needs… I can promise you this: We have done a lot in recent years, with the help of the residents and with the help of G-d, and in the coming month, at least 20 new caravans with families will be put up in the Binyamin region."

The first concerns the water diversion scheme in Lebanon. Ha’Aretz reports:

Lebanon pumped water on Wednesday from the Wazzani River, testing for the first time a project to draw water from the river that also feeds Israel. An official overseeing the project described a four-minute test of Lebanon's biggest project to date to pump water from the Wazzani river as "very successful."

The Hezbollah guerrilla group described as "a great victory" the four-minute test of Lebanon's biggest project to date to pump water from the Wazzani.

Israel has made it perfectly clear that the diversion would be considered casus belli, yet there seems to be no real action on Israel's part. I am reminded of the days before the 1967 war, when diplomacy to reverse the closure of the Straits of Tiran only succeeded in emboldening Nasser more and more (since the 1956 war, Israel made it clear that the closure would be considered casus belli). In the end, the embattled democratic republic of Israel was forced to resort to arms against the autocratic regimes surrounding her.

The second troubling news item concerns the dismantling of settlements in Judea/Samaria by the Israeli government. The Jerusalem Post reports:

The IDF dismantled three Jewish settlement outposts in the West Bank on Wednesday and plans to remove 24 others in the coming week, Defense officials said.

The action came a day after four Israelis were wounded in an ambush on a car in the Hebron area, one of whom remains in critical condition at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem's Ein Karem.

I realize that as a Canadian living in a peaceful country, thousands of miles away from Jerusalem, I have no right to "advise" the democratically-elected government of Israel how to run its affairs. And yet, reading these two news stories I can hardly squelch my plea, “For the love of democracy, don’t go wobbly, Israel!”.

A concession to terrorists anywhere hurts democracies everywhere, as the appeasement calamity in Munich, 1938, proved. And who should know this truth better than Israel? A comprehensive examination of the consequences of trying to appease the Arabs through concessions is a job for an entire book, not for a blogger’s article, but I can hardly refrain from mentioning two major Israeli concessions that failed miserably: the Oslo Accords (September, 1993) and the unilateral withdrawal of the IDF from Lebanon (May, 2000). Both resulted in emboldening terrorists.

And so, once again, for the love of democracy, don’t go wobbly, Israel!.

October 09, 2002

Kill Zionists, not each other - PLO

The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) bluntly called on people on Tuesday "not to kill each other" following deadly clashes sparked by the gangland-style slaying of a police commander in the Gaza Strip.

The 11 groups making up the PLO also condemned in their statement all who “attempted to sow discord" among Palestinians, after two days of sporadic street fighting between Islamists and police that claimed the lives of four people.

"The blood of Palestinians is sacred, and Palestinian arms must be used solely against the Zionist enemy," they said, referring to the two-year uprising against Israeli occupation.

Palestinian leaders frustrated over the stalemated peace process warned the Bush administration this week that they are contemplating a radical and explosive new tactic: dropping their longstanding demand for an independent Palestinian state and instead seeking full citizenship within Israel.

Such a move, broached by a leading Palestinian reformer and his delegation during meetings with senior Bush administration officials on Monday and Tuesday, would be the diplomatic equivalent of using a population bomb against Israel. Demographic trends indicate the number of Palestinians will exceed Jewish Israelis within a decade, meaning that Israel could not grant all Palestinians citizenship without jeopardizing its identity as a Jewish state.

But a Palestinian official asserted that Israel's continuing expansion of Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas, as well as the Israeli military re-occupation of most of the West Bank and Gaza, is destroying the viability of any future Palestinian state, thus compelling Palestinians to pursue other avenues to achieve their rights and alleviate the burdens of Israeli checkpoints and curfews.

While protesting a possible Amrican/British war against Iraq, the Mayor of London manages to spend a good deal of his time blasting Israel...how quickly some people lose focus.

Mayor Ken Livingstone has infuriated political friends and foes by accusing Ariel Sharon of being a war criminal and a mass murderer in a TV interview during Saturday’s London march against a war on Iraq.

Speaking on Sky News, he said: “Only one country in the Middle East has nuclear weapons — Israel — and we are making no attempt to remove these. Once again it is double standards with the US taking a broadly anti-Muslim, anti-Arab position.”

Asked whether weapons inspectors should go back into Iraq, Mr Livingstone said: “The reality is that he [Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein] is not the immediate nuclear threat. There is no danger about nuclear weapons [from Iraq]. The only nuclear weapons in the Middle East are in the hands of Sharon, a very unstable leader with a record of war crimes and mass murder.”

The mayor’s remarks followed his recent move to ban a Trafalgar Square demonstration by the radical Muslim group Al-Muhajiroun, which has repeatedly described Mr Sharon as a war criminal.

He was taken to task by the deputy mayor, Nicky Gavron, who is bidding to be his Labour challenger at the next election. She told the JC: “It would have been better if Ken had said some constructive things about the Middle East.”

Ilford Labour MP Mike Gapes accused Mr Livingstone of remarks “not helpful to community relations in our city. It is wrong for the mayor of London to take such an unbalanced view of a conflict issue,” he said

"The historic regions of "Judea and Samaria" — their official names as indicated on all British mandate maps until 1948 — were annexed and became the "West Bank" of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1950. "

One of 14 facts to understand when thinking about the Arab Israeli Conflict.

I won't dignify Edward Said's rant by posting it here. For those interested in the tricky writing of a skilled rhetorician, you can see how he cleverly twists facts. No where does he mention peace offers. No where does he mention terror attacks. Poor Arafat (whom Said loathes) is isolated, trapped by Zionists. Meanwhile the entire Palestinian people, with the most of world is strongly united, he claims, against what Israel is doing ! And oh yes: there is a conspiracy among Jewish students and academics to stifle those who would support the Palestinians etc etc.

But if you want to get annoyed then by all means read the piece at URL

An anti-Semitic conference at an American university is arousing groundswells of objections. The University of Michigan has agreed to allow a three-day "Palestinian Solidarity" conference to be held on its grounds, beginning this coming Saturday. The conference supports campaigns to urge university and corporate divestment from Israel, and its web site condemns Israel for "occupation," "colonization," and "apartheid," and claims that "racism and discrimination are inherent in Zionism."

Pro-Israel groups have organized opposition to the conference, including a "Shabbat Against Hate" at the University of Michigan this weekend with Rabbi Avi Weiss. In addition, buses will be leaving New York on Saturday night to hold a counter-demonstration.

The Detroit News newspaper, in a Sep. 29 editorial, described the conference as "a student workshop that expresses tacit support for terrorism and has as its mission the destruction of Israel," and asked, "Should forums that espouse hate and push to the very edge of inciting violence find a warm spot at a public university to grow their detestable ideals?" University of Michigan President Mary Coleman said recently that the conference "represents the views of the organizers and not the University of Michigan," and said that she does not support divestment. Richard Dorfman, co-founder of Michigan Student Zionists, has sued the University of Michigan for "endangering the security of students on campus by allowing the incitement of violence by these speakers."

GAZA CITY — Fighting has broken out between Palestinian Authority forces and Hamas insurgents in the Gaza Strip after an assassination attempt on a senior Palestinian official.

PA forces stormed Hamas strongholds and in the ensuing gunfight at least five Hamas members were killed and 30 injured. The operation came in wake of an assassination of a senior PA officer by Hamas gunmen. Hamas denied being involved in the assassination.

A PA statement said a Hamas force of 20 agents, dressed in police uniforms, abducted and killed Col. Rajah Abu Yehya, 55. Abu Yehya was identified as head of the PA riot police who led operations against Hamas and its supporters.

It was the first clash between the two organizations in more than a year, Middle East Newsline reported.

The statement said Palestinians threw stones at PA police who sought to arrest Hamas agents after the assassination on Monday. Thousands of Hamas supporters later surrounded and torched a police station in Gaza City.

Two of the Hamas members were killed in a shootout in Gaza City. The others were killed in the Nusseirat camp during a PA police operation to capture suspects. The police force withdrew under Hamas fire.

A PA security source said the assassination of Abu Yehya was headed by Imad Aql, the brother of a Hamas agent killed by police during demonstrations in support of Osama Bin Laden in September 2001. Three Hamas members were killed during the pro-Bin Laden protests in the Gaza Strip refugee camp of Jabalya more than a year ago.

PA National Security Adviser Mohammed Dahlan warned Hamas to hand over the suspects in the assassination of Abu Yehya. Dahlan's call was echoed by the ruling Fatah movement loyal to PA Chairman Yasser Arafat.

"Fatah will not permit anybody to weaken the internal front and will hit with an iron first those who look to launch an internal fight in the Palestinian street," Fatah said in a statement.

On Monday, 14 Palestinians were killed and 70 were injured during an Israeli military raid of the Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis. Hamas, which was the target of the Israeli operation, has called for attacks on Israelis and their supporters.

On Tuesday, Hamas gunners fired Kassam-class short-range missiles at Israeli communities in the Gaza Strip. Nobody was injured. Outside the West Bank city of Hebron, an Israeli national was shot and killed in a Palestinian ambush

As usual, the anticipated, universal condemnation of Israel over the recent IDF operation in Khan Yunis raised in my mind three questions.

First, Kofi’s participation in the anti-Israel chorus triggers the question as to whether the person who was condemned by the UN itself over Rwanda is the right person to cast the first stone at our sister-democracy in the Middle East. For those who do not remember Kofi’s role in the Rwanda genocide, here is a reminder, quoted from an official UN report (page 30, beginning of Section III):

The Independent Inquiry finds that the response of the United Nations before and during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda failed in a number of fundamental respects. The responsibility for the failings of the United Nations to prevent and stop the genocide in Rwanda lies with a number of different actors, in particular the Secretary-General, the Secretariat, the Security Council, UNAMIR and the broader membership of the United Nations. This international responsibility is one which warrants a clear apology by the Organization and by Member States concerned to the Rwandese people.

But Kofi is a Teflon man, and nothing will stick to him even as he maligns our sister-democracy, Israel.

Second question: why is it that the causes of the Khan Yunis operation deserve no condemnation whatever, even as Israel is pilloried for engaging in self-defense? The constant shelling of Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip has not eluded the press, nor has the fact that the Gaza Strip is home to terrorists who don't even bother to conceal their determination to murder Israeli civilians; and yet there is barely a reference to the terrorists’ provocation in the midst of the chorus of anti-Israeli condemnation. Interestingly, at the end of July, 2002 (a mere two months ago), Israel went after the arch-terrorist Salah Shehada and several civilians were killed in the course of assassinating him. The chorus of standard condemnations that followed inevitably was answered in an article posted by an article in the Wall Street Journal/Opinion Journal on July 27, 2002. The article, entitled Civilian Casualties: No Apology Needed - America should learn from Israel, not criticize it, was authored by Ralph Peters, introduced as “a retired Army officer”, and “the author of Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World”. In his article, Ralph Peters notes, inter alia:

Earlier this week, Israel succeeded in killing Salah Shehada, a savage Hamas mastermind, and one of his top aides. A dozen Palestinian civilians died in the attack, including members of Shehada's family. The civilian deaths may be lamentable, but they also were justifiable. A terrorist leader used his relatives and neighbors as shields, and they died with him. Their deaths were Shehada's fault, not Israel's.

Once again, much of the world has applied a double standard, accusing Israel of barbarity for inflicting civilian casualties as part of a legitimate military operation, while overlooking the hundreds of Israeli civilians killed intentionally by Shehada and his subordinates. For Europeans, especially, Jewish lives count no more today than they did in 1944.

Why are Palestinian terrorists allowed to target civilians without exciting an international outcry, while every accidental civilian death inflicted by Israel is a crime against humanity?

But the Palestinian Arab terrorists are Teflon men, and nothing will stick to them even as the Quartet maligns our sister-democracy, Israel.

The third question is this: quite apart from terrorist acts against Israel, the Palestinian Arabs are guilty of the most despicable conduct, from internecine murder, through the use of ambulances and children as war weapons, to overt antisemitism. Yet this conduct goes un-noticed by those who are so overly eager to pounce on Israel at every turn. A detailed documentation of the foregoing allegation warrants a separate article, but for the sake of illustration, following is a random collection of recent incidents concerning “collaborators”; all the human rights abuses listed below were reported in a 16 day period:

1. On August 24, 2002, the Jerusalem Post reported that

At least 200 Palestinians suspected of collaboration with Israel are being held in Palestinian Authority prisons, according to informed Palestinian sources. Many of them have complained of torture and may face execution.

2. The next day, August 25, Reuters reported under the headline, Palestinians Kill Woman 'Collaborator' in West Bank:

Palestinian militants accusing a woman of collaborating with Israel wrenched her from her West Bank home, took her to the town square and shot her dead, Palestinians said Sunday.

Ikhlas Yassin, a 35-year-old mother of three, was forced out of her Tulkarm house Saturday night, made to confess to collaborating with Israel and shot in the chest and head by militants in a group linked to President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction.

(CNSNews) The United Nations was accused Wednesday of allegedly helping Lebanon's Hezbollah terrorist forces ambush three Israeli soldiers and abduct an Israeli citizen traveling in Europe.

The accusations were made by the mother of one of the Israeli soldiers and the chairwoman of the House subcommittee conducting a hearing on the fate of the Israelis.

According to press reports at the time, on October 7, 2000, Omar Suaed, Beni Avrham and Adi Avitan were in an Israeli army jeep when Hezbollah forces allegedly ambushed it near the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Disguised as United Nations peacekeepers, the Hezbollah guerrillas allegedly lured the soldiers close to the border fence, blew open the gate and opened fire on the soldiers in the proximity of the real U.N. peacekeepers operating along the Lebanese border.

Within minutes the Israelis had been bundled away across the border, but at the time of the incident, United Nations officials denied their peacekeepers had aided the Hezbollah guerillas.

Zipora Avitan, the mother of Adi Avitan, told the House Middle East subcommittee she believes the United Nations was complicit in her son's death.

"We are ordinary people, not politicians, and our hearts ache at the way the U.N. treated us, at its deception. Slowly, as details of the incident became known, we started forming a clear picture of what happened. It was discovered that the terrorists used U.N. uniforms and vehicles, with the knowledge and consent of U.N. personnel," she said, during her subcommittee testimony. [Read More]

October 08, 2002

Once again the Danish are leading the global charge of anti-Semitism, now forbidding security guards in Yesha, lest someone prevent a mass murder by a heroic "freedom fighter." You can contact the company in question and let them know how you feel at the addresses below.

(Jerusalem Post) The new Danish owner of Hashmira, the country's largest security firm, has ordered it to cease providing protection for Jews living over the Green Line, the company said in a statement issued Tuesday.

According to Copenhagen-based Group 4 Falck, which acquired Hashmira only six months ago, it asked it to "present a plan for the phasing out of all activities in the West Bank at the next board meeting on October 28."

Group 4 said the company's operations in the territories have a defensive and preventative aim only, with activities that include guarding schools and day care centers.

At the time of the acquisition, the company said it knew of Hashmira's operations in Judea and Samaria but that its legal advisers did not say this constituted a problem.

The company said that under criticism from Politiken, a Danish newspaper, it agreed to carry out another investigation of its activities to determine whether they contradict the Geneva Convention. In the meantime, the company has asked Hashmira to cease all activities in the region. (Emphasis added)

This is an interesting piece of writing. Note the title: Bad Israelis did not obey President Bush. As though the Palestinians do.
Note the language--so flavorful in its contempt! People are killed. Why? Well it seems the naughty Israelis were in hot pursuit of terrorists. And on and on it goes, slipping in the occassional fact of a Hamas killer or a Palestinian shooter. And at the very end, ah, fighting between and among Palestinian factions. But read the article:

JERUSALEM (AFP) - A Palestinian girl was killed in the Gaza Strip as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledged more army raids into the bastion of Islamic militants, the day after an incursion killed 16 Palestinians there and drew a strong rebuke from Israel's top ally Washington.

In other violence, four Israelis were wounded, one of them seriously, in an ambush near Hebron in the West Bank, while new clashes erupted between Palestinian police and supporters of the Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Israel also took a drubbing from the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross who pronounced the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territories the most dire in 35 years of Israeli occupation.

Another life was claimed in the Gaza Strip Tuesday as Israeli gunfire hit Maisa Zanoun, 12, in the chest in the southern town of Rafah, Palestinian medical sources said.

Military sources said troops stationed at a base on the outskirts of Rafah, along the town's border with Egypt, were attacked by a number of Palestinians and had returned fire, but said they did not know whether there were any casualties.

The bloodshed came hours after a defiant Sharon vowed more army raids into the Gaza Strip like the one on Monday in Khan Yunis that claimed the lives of 16 Palestinians and drew strong international rebukes including a barrage of criticism from Washington.

US President George W. Bush is "deeply concerned" about reports of Israeli raids in Gaza that have left civilians dead or wounded, his spokesman Ari Fleischer said in a statement Tuesday.

Bush's scolding came on top of harsh words from the US State Department as Washington looks to quiet the two-year conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as it threatens military intervention in Iraq.

"We are in touch with the Israelis to tell them that they have to examine their actions with great care, to avoid this kind of loss of life which does not further our efforts to find a peaceful solution," US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday, referring to the deadly Khan Yunis raid.

However, Israel's right-wing premier, forced to bow to US pressure last month to end his siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's base, appeared to pay no heed to the stream of international outrage over Monday's raid.

"The complicated operation we carried out was a success. It was an important one and there will be other anti-terrorist operations of this sort in the Gaza Strip," Sharon said.

Army officers said the raid, which saw 40 tanks storm a residential area, was aimed at rooting out Hamas' homemade rocket factories.

Sharon's comments appeared to fly in the face of US attempts to calm the region even as he prepares to visit the White House next week to hear what Bush wants from Israel concerning the looming showdown with Baghdad.

Sharon's pugnacious remarks also drew irate reactions from the Palestinians, who qualified them as tantamount to a declaration of war.

"Sharon's announcement was a declaration of war against the Palestinian people and a major challenge to UN Security Council resolutions" calling on Israel to quit Palestinian land, senior official Nabil Abu Rudeina said.

In a boost for the Palestinians, Israel's reoccupation of the West Bank was taken to task by the head of the International Committee for the Red Cross, Jakob Kellenberger, who is on a visit to the region.

"The humanitarian situation has never been as bad as it is now," said Kellenberger, whose humanitarian organisation has had a permanent presence in the territories since they were captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

"We are in a crisis," he told reporters in Jerusalem, adding that the situation had deteriorated sharply since March when Israel first reoccupied Palestinian self-rule cities in the West Bank to stamp out militant groups sending suicide bombers into Israel.

And Palestinian security forces were still searching Tuesday for a renegade Hamas operative who, together with 20 of his men, abducted and murdered a Gaza police chief, in apparent revenge for the killing of two Islamists a year ago in anti-US riots which the police tried to suppress.

In gunbattles after the murder, four Hamas supporters were shot dead as police tracked down Imad Aqel, the local Hamas leader who carried out the hit.

Fresh clashes broke out Tuesday when Hamas supporters threw three home-made hand grenades at Gaza police headquarters before being dispersed. Nobody was injured in the skirmish.

In a bid to calm the situation, the National and Islamic Forces, an umbrella group of the 13 main Palestinian factions, including both Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement and Hamas, met in Gaza City Tuesday night to try to resolve the feud, a high-ranking Fatah official said.

But the talks ended without any agreement being reached, a Hamas leader said later, who stressed the sides would keep meeting.

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October 2000

Israel: 'More Than 90 Percent' of Incoming Missiles From Iraq Could Be Destroyed

Gaza Strip The Islamic militant group Hamas threatened new attacks Monday after Israel fired a missile into a crowded Gaza street and killed 11 Palestinians. Israel drew U.S. condemnation and Palestinian allegations of massacre after killing 14 Palestinians in a raid on suspected militants in the Gaza Strip. GAZA CITY - Ten Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded today during an Israeli incursion into the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, officials and doctors said, most when a helicopter fired a missile that exploded in a crowd. Israel, which has deployed two of its cutting - edge Arrow anti - missile batteries and is building a third, believes the air defense system would destroy more than 90 percent of any missiles launched by Iraq, officials said Sunday.